I used to mine for the direct coins I wanted and recently switched to BTC payout. I've noticed better payout and it allows you to play on the exchanges with the purchasing as opposed to what it appears the pool does, just dumps it at the current rate.
My concern is the network fee for BTC transfers eats up quite a bit of mining proceeds.
Crack lumps the transactions together and gets a smaller fee. The big one you'd pay would be going from your wallet to the exchange.